The Three Lives of Hermione Granger
by complex-manifold
Summary: After Harry dies in the last battle, Hermione, armed only with Peverell's cloak, sets out to either bring him back or die trying. In the process, she lives (three lifetimes even), sees the world of the dead (twice), kills Voldemort (once), and keeps fighting a war that never ends...
1. Time's End

It feels like time has ended.

Harry is thrown backwards, arms spread, on the forest floor amid trampled grass and burnt branches.

Hermione runs to his side. His head jerks a little, and she can see his scar, a scarlet bolt on his forehead like a fresh wound.

Then, he stops moving.

For a moment, the whole battlefield stops moving, too. Death Eaters, giants, elves and students alike frozen in their tracks, as though they don't know what is supposed to happen next, watching their once hero morph into a future martyr.

Mrs Malfoy confirms Harry's death. It feels impossible. It's not real yet. If time doesn't pick up, it might not ever be. As it is, as they all march back to the castle following Hagrid, she can't tell if it's the night or the Dementors but the world looks significantly darker and more silent. She feels Ron's hand worm its way into her, and for a moment she thinks, she wishes it might be enough, but they're both so cold.

The procession moves on. Still in silence, Hermione, her friends, her enemies, her teachers, her classmates, and that one friend, teacher and classmate books and cleverness couldn't save walk into the Great Hall.

Voldemort declares he will let them pay their respects, and say goodbye to "the Boy-Who-Passed-Away", friend, student, outlaw, lost to them so soon. "A talented enough boy, of course," says Voldemort, as though giving a favourite student's funeral speech. "Such a senseless suicide."

When it's Hermione's turn she sees a smile on his face. He's wet, likely from Hagrid's tears. _One of us has to die._ So that's it, that's decided, that's who.

It's too short, and Hermione walks away and lets Ron take his turn.

"Stupefy!"

Hermione turns sharply. Where time had frozen it now resumes too fast: Ron was there standing, his wand in hand, a red bolt targeted at Voldemort, who didn't even bother raising the Elder Wand again, and now Ron's here at her feet, and there's blood, and Mrs Malfoy on the other side is so pale, and Ron's so red, you'd think she was dead and he was alive.

She's done it. She's taken her revenge on the woman who killed her sister by taking away her son, because that's love and war for you. Hermione agrees. She's drawing her own wand, she could do it, take out Mrs Malfoy – better, here's Draco in the room, queuing up to see the body, as though he has any _right_-

Hermione's cleverness overtakes her heart for a moment, and she silently keeps the wand sheathed. She lost Harry and she lost Ron, but they aren't the biggest losses, and Malfoy or his mother aren't the scariest enemies. The Dementors are roaming free all the way to Hogsmeade. In the village, evacuated sixteen-, thirteen-, eleven-years-old don't yet know that all hope is lost, and on Monday they'll come back to Dark Arts classes and torture chambers. She'll be killed, now that Harry isn't there to be lured, or at the very best exiled – either way, she's lost her world.

The gliding Dementors are haunting the Quidditch field and filling Hogwarts with their screeches, and Hermione is reminded of the last time they'd been there, when Voldemort was still a shadow himself, when she and Harry could just travel back in time and Hermione actually thought she'd finish school.

To survive and think, Hermione grabs Harry's invisibility cloak, laid near his body now that the Death Eaters have left and the survivors can grieve in peace. She throws it upon her shoulders and, after a last look at Ginny, comforting her tearful mother even though she must be so shaken herself, vanishes.

* * *

Though she's on a Muggle train to London, Hermione keeps the cloak folded on her knees, stroking the cloth as though to make sure it's still there. She can't believe she's safe, not yet, perhaps, in this world, not ever. She knows she hasn't been followed from Hogwarts, but London's another matter entirely, and for her, the war won't end. She understands, of course, that the wars of your life stay with you until life itself leaves, and that's what happened to Lupin, and Professor Snape, and poor Sirius, and surely it would've happened to Harry's parents, and perhaps their fate was kinder after all.

She thinks of the Hallows. She has the Cloak, looking so drab and innocent in the Muggle train's stark yellow electric light. It's not the one she'd have chosen, of course. Before, when Harry and Ron were there with her chasing for them, she'd most wanted the Wand, because magic has always been what Hermione trusted more about herself. It has driven away the bullies when she was a child, generated compliments in school, brought catharsis for her stronger emotions, and given her a fighting chance. If the prophecy was right, it could've saved Harry's soul.

But now Harry's soul, wherever it is, is no longer in danger, and she would want the Stone most. Just once, to ask him what was needed. All right, twice, because she wants to say goodbye to Ron, and that she loved him. Maybe just another time, to ask Harry's parents if there is any worry in death, if they ever wonder about the fate of the living, about this world, her world, Voldemort's world. To, perhaps, gather the courage to join them.

What she has is only the Cloak, the means to flee death, though where to she has no idea. Isn't it said to be the best of the three? Wasn't Ignatius the wisest brother, and the last one standing?

* * *

At the Ministry no one notices her. Voldemort and the Death Eaters spent the night at Hogwarts, and news of the death of the boy who should have lived haven't made it here, yet. She frets underneath the Cloak, tempted to burst into sight and yell they've won, scare away those Death Eater sympathizers, buy time for the few righteous wizards to run away to safety, but the youngest Peverell didn't get to be the wisest by running to his enemies. She tells herself the remaining few loyal to Harry are probably dead, or exiled, or defeated. She watches the daily operations for a while. Witches and wizards are sending owls, signing parchment forms, and briskly walking between offices. They talk about their dinners and their families and tell jokes, and for a moment, it's like this corner of the world runs on its own time, which hasn't caught on that it's supposed to have ended yet.

In the rectangular room of the Department of Mysteries, the veil awaits still, animated by winds that no science or magic Hermione knows can explain. She descends to the centre of the room, slowly, still hidden in Harry's invisibility cloak. When they shared that cloak in the past it was often in dangerous situations, but Hermione hadn't minded, because she always felt it protected them from all the darkest forces in the world, that with it, he would live, as he was meant to. To be wearing it alone now... it would have been unthinkable.

She stares straight at the veil, hoping to catch in the tattered folds a glimpse of the next world, hoping to hear a voice, perhaps a joking Ron or a sullen Harry, or Professor Lupin, telling her not to give up, to give Teddy a chance at growing up in a world worth living for. Perhaps Professor Dumbledore could throw her a book from beyond the veil, and in there could be the answer. It could be a book on how to live, or even how to die, and Hermione feels like she could follow either and do equally well.

But there is nothing to follow, and the room stays eerily silent and empty, her own body invisible.

Ginny could hear the voices, she remembers, but Ginny has better things to do, she has a mother and brothers left, she has a year of school in that horrible hellhole left, Ginny knows she needs to live. Hermione was never very jealous of Ginny, but now she is, because Ginny's lost Harry and Ron and Fred, and she could have lost Arthur, but she hasn't lost herself. Ginny can hear the voices behind the veil, unlike deaf Hermione, but she can also turn away and live, unlike Hermione who stands here, fascinated and frightened.

Hermione isn't sure whether she wants to join Harry and Ron or bring them back with her, but she knows eventually some Unspeakable is going to figure out someone's getting in the way of her job, so Hermione has to decide fast. _What would Harry do? _She thinks of the Harry who had to be restrained not to go after Sirius. The Harry who almost walked away alone after Professor Dumbledore's funeral. But mostly she thinks of the Harry who walked through the forest to Voldemort, and that's why she fastens the cloak before lifting a fold of the veil, and walking into the bright light.


	2. Hermione Skips An Exam

It's an examination room. Seeing all the others already seated, Hermione hastens to find a chair, but there's no parchement on her desk.

She raises her hand, but no one comes. Sometimes, one of the others stands up, and brings their parchment to the examiner, and a door appears out of nowhere for them. As soon as they pass, it's gone.

She looks for Harry, or Ron, somewhere in the crowd. But there are only strangers. On the white walls are clocks, hung up every few feet into the awfully large room – it is so large, Hermione can't tell where it ends – and all the clocks tell the same time. Hermione waits, and they don't move.

She finally decides to walk through the room, to see if perhaps they could be farther away. She walks for what seems to be a long time, but her feet aren't sore and she doesn't feel thirsty, even though she's sure she's had nothing to drink since the train.

She sees many people, scrambling to seats, raising their hand to say they're finished, playing cards instead of writing. At one point, she thinks she might recognize Fred – there's a redheaded man missing an ear tickling the neck of the pupil before him with his quill – but as she walks to his seat to try to talk to him there's a shuffle, some pupils rise and others sit down, and when she finally reaches his desk he's gone.

Hermione wraps the cloak tighter around her. She's left her world at war, and she doesn't quite know where to. What she does know, though, is that she must find a way to leave, fast, before Ginny or Neville or her poor, poor unknowing parents wind up here and she has to see them, and admit she's failed.

Magic doesn't seem to work, in this infinite timeless room. She tries attracting the attention of the examiner by producing a Patronus, but nothing comes out of her wand. Hermione feels invisible, and she can't even take off her cloak, Harry's cloak, the Deathly Cloak, because really, she is fleeing from death.

And just as she thinks so, a man enters from a door in the wall who has to him the air of the Voldemort of the locket, minus the red eyes. For a second she thinks she's won, it's over, he's finished. Harry succeeded. But the man who brushes past her isn't wearing robes, or looking hurt; he stares straight ahead as if in a dream, fear etched onto his features, and swiftly goes back to hold the door with his hand.

He's standing there on the threshold, powerless, and behind him a great wind seems to be blowing from another world. Hermione watches as the examiner strides towards them, a parchment and quill in hand, and she understands they're not destined for her.

She takes a deep breath, and runs.

She pushes Voldemort's father towards the examination room of the dead. As the door closes, she doesn't stop; she throws herself at the wind and the living world, screaming. There is no one to hear.

* * *

The room Voldemort's father died in was richly decorated, and well-lit. At first Hermione tries to run for the shadows, but then she remembers she is also invisible to the living, and the killer is nowhere to be seen. That's something of a shame. Hermione is definitely more used to battle by now that Voldemort at the same age, and if she'd only dispatched him as soon as possible she could have perhaps gained the Stone, before it was cursed. She's not meant to have the Hallows, of course, and she knows she's also not meant to desire them, but it's the first time Hermione has seen a loved one die and she feels a spike of guilt for lecturing Harry about wanting it, before.

Then she comes to her senses. Voldemort thought he saved the world he wanted to have by murdering a teenage boy, and here Hermione was about to declare him right. She thought Harry could kill Voldemort, too, originally, that this was his role in the prophecy, and that night in the forest, when he walked alone to die, it was clear it had never been his intention. Hermione has the Cloak, and she can gather the others if she's careful enough, and Voldemort is quite possibly just a few rooms over in the form of an unwary boy who's just lost half his soul, but she needs to focus, she tells herself, and not give in to death, or fear or desire of it. She thinks of Harry's parents. The last enemy that shall be vanquished is death.

She needs to send Voldemort away, she realizes, but she won't give her soul for it.

Her resolution solidified, Hermione takes out her wand and sets off for a place that might help her get rid of the darkest wizard of her time – the Ministry of Magic.

When Hermione stops over in small villages and stretches of countryside while Apparating, she can't help noticing how meager the people's meals seem, and how few people there really are. It's the first time she really takes in that she's in a different time period, and at first she catches herself thinking that perhaps it was all a dream, and this is her world, after Voldemort takes over.

But it isn't. It's late August in 1943, and they aren't fighting the same war. Hermione thinks they're much better off that way, because at least the enemy isn't vastly more powerful, but what does she know, really? She didn't even go to school to learn of the Muggles' history and their wars properly, and she can analyze the political stakes of any of the goblin rebellions at length but can't even figure out how many of these people will see their families whole again, when it is all over. For this, she grows sad, and if her time hadn't ended already, she would have helped them as she could. She is, after all, a witch.

But there's another war being fought in Hermione's head, and though the people dying in it over and over can be counted on her hands, it feels more important. It doesn't disappear, when she sleeps, and it won't disappear, while she lives. Time or fighting seem to have no effect on it, and in that, it seems most frightening. The Cloak can't make her invisible to that enemy, and for that, the promises of security she gets from it periodically sound as as many lies.

* * *

In the Ministry of Magic, as when she left, there is no war. Several piles of rubble in the half-burned building where the service entrance is located seem to say otherwise, but the witches and wizards queuing up near the telephone, surprisingly unscathed on what remains of the north wall, are chatting to each other as though this is merely the very unusual facade of their workplace.

Underneath, the layout is unchanged. Hermione sits in the Atrium, as if waiting for a receptionist, with much the same patient apathy as she had for a while in the examination room, beyond the veil. She can't go to Hogwarts – too watched, too remote, and too familiar also – and nothing can happen if she stays here. Her first thought was to wait for the Aurors to bring in Morfin, and then jump to speak up in his defence, as a witness. She has no credibility – well, as a witch, she has a little more credibility than that Muggle gardener, but that's it – and she knows none of the people here. Can her words really be enough? And then, there's Dumbledore. Dumbledore... at thinking here he's alive, here he's fighting, here he's there, a part of her is excited and reassured. And then... it isn't the same Professor Dumbledore, not really. It isn't the Professor Dumbledore who created the Order. It's probably not even the Professor Dumbledore who led Harry to the Dursleys, and of all things, it's really not the Professor Dumbledore who left for her the book on Horcruxes. At the idea of meeting the Albus Dumbledore that _is_, Hermione's throat dries and her brain worries.

In so many ways, it could go wrong.


	3. Judge, Jury and Executioners

The Albus Dumbledore that _is_ is a tall man, with flowing robes and long auburn hair, and from where she sits the look on his face doesn't have the good will that characterized the Albus Dumbledore that will be.

The Aurors wouldn't let her speak. She'd thought of Voldemort's uncle Morfin as looking either somewhat like him, or somewhat like Salazar Slytherin, but ravaged by poverty and petty crime; but he was a miserable wretch of a man that rambled on incoherently, and it's clear only Dumbledore has the clout to say anything in the favour of such a pariah. It's the third time Hermione hears about crime and punishment in the Wizarding World, after Harry's mockery of a trial and the horrible Muggle-born registration mess back in the other world, her world, the world where Voldemort wins. She's read about it, of course, she could recite the different levels of crime and the process of passing new laws, and it still surprises her. In the Muggle world even Morfin would have had a lawyer, the investigators would have taken her deposition, there would have been a record of the trial. In this world, Morfin kept yelling about a ring even as he was dragged to prison, and, as Auror Longbottom told Hermione sadly, it's not like he had any family left to return to.

It's obvious now, as it wasn't then, that the instances of the process of the law she's heard about before weren't exceptions brought on by a time of war and the fear of Voldemort, but timeless rules maintained by the general apathy of wizardkind, and she feels her heart beat faster and hands form into fists. In a world that's not to come, where her friend Harry's alive and Voldemort doesn't rule over Britain, she could've fought for this. She can see herself rising to the defence of the elves, the werewolves, the mad and the poor and the unknown, and stopping the near-permanent influx of souls into the dark corridors of Azkaban.

Hermione turns sharply to look for Dumbledore. He's taking his time, talking to the receptionist. In this world, her own soul is all Hermione can really save.

Right as Dumbledore is told to move on to the lifts, Hermione rises and runs. She touches Dumbledore's arm, and she can see on the faces of the other witches and wizards in the room that she only looks like another mad stranger now.

"I saw the Muggle die," she tells Dumbledore. That much is true: she even saw him hesitate at death's door. There's a moment of silence as he examines her. She looks deep into his eyes, hoping to see them twinkle, and a little shred of her world come back.

* * *

Hermione sits across from Dumbledore in a more secluded meeting room. She hasn't eaten or slept in a while, and it's unsettling: she has to remind herself that her physical incomfort means she's not dead yet. But Dumbledore wants details; he wants evidence; he wants accusations, and tired hungry Hermione tries to deliver. Yes, she's seen Tom Riddle the elder die. She describes the room she appeared in when she came back to the world with all that expensive furniture. Has she seen the killer? She lies. Almost. Well, she's seen Voldemort in the future, and she's heard him admit to that crime before, and Harry said he saw Voldemort's father emerge from his wand, after Harry's own parents had. It's not a big lie. It's more reformulating the information to shape it into making sense, like what she's always done to get those good marks at school.

All the time Dumbledore looks straight at her. He's never interrupted her, yet, and she knows he knows what a strange coincidence her presence at that place is – and she knows he knows he hasn't seen her, back at Hogwarts, even though she's obviously a young witch. He remains silent, though, and that's where Hermione recognizes the old Dumbledore, who won't too hastily expose a secret. That Dumbledore looks more kingly than kindly, more Arthur than Merlin still, but he's still Dumbledore, and that's something Hermione can hold on to.

"Miss Granger," he finally says, "I know you don't believe you are lying, and I can tell you know more about the case than the Aurors do."

"Yes, sir?" Hermione can't help it. Suddenly she's just trying to give him the right answer again.

He continues. "Even if the boy you described is indeed a student at Hogwarts, as you said his apparent age would indicate, then I cannot have him summoned on what our law enforcers might call a suspicion. They've already convicted someone. I cannot just march into Azkaban."

The old Dumbledore could. Hermione knows how much reputation matters, for being so often near Harry, but she hadn't thought nearly all Dumbledore's own clout came from being a hero. Here, only a wise schoolteacher, he's almost powerless: a once bright student with large ideas that no one can really listen to. Just like her.

"I understand." She rises. She's lost. Even if the idea is now planted in Dumbledore's mind, and she doubts it never crossed it before, it won't go any farther from there. Not until Dumbledore sits on the Wizengamot and wields the Elder Wand and rules over Hogwarts, at least a decade too late.

* * *

London in that time is a lot quieter than she remembers. There are no wild groups of tourists, despite it being the height of summer, and few children. Advertisements don't always have colours; certainly they aren't constantly cycled on bright screens. It's the first time in almost a year she's spent significant time in a Muggle city, without having something to run from or even somewhere to go, and she realizes she has no idea what to do next. She doesn't recall reading a book on the subject: in adventure novels, the characters always meet some helpful odd local to lend them a bed, feed them in the morning and send them on a quest, but here, the locals seem rather reserved and the oddest person she knew just refused her help for very pragmatic reasons.

It takes until Hermione passes by a restaurant for her to remember she has no Muggle money. More tired than before, she turns back, to Gringotts. She can Apparate there: in this somewhat less busy London there are more dark corners to vanish from.

Hermione's lucky she's prepared. She still had a few Galleons left, not enough that she could stay at a wizarding inn, but probably enough to eat in the Muggle world for a few days. When the goblin at the desk returns with her money, she can't believe her eyes: her gold is suddenly so valuable, she could stay in this time period a whole month – right up until Voldemort goes to school. The bills and coins she's counting are very unfamiliar to Hermione. She remembers her parents mentioning there was a different kind of money before, but she's never seen any in person, until today, and she's handled little enough Muggle money that she's suddenly afraid that she's got the cost of things very far off. What with the war, it would be expected for most food to be rarer, and thus more expensive.

Restaurants turn out to be reasonably cheap, and Hermione's worries about her money lasting her long enough start to abate. She eats too fast, her first true meal in a little over sixteen hours, and the meal is a little less tasty than she's used to but the vegetables are all right. She walks in search of a hotel afterward feeling sleepy, and that's it, she'sdefinitely not dead. Like Voldemort. Unlike Harry and Ron.

* * *

Hermione hasn't even checked how much the room cost. She checked in, walked in, stumbled haphazardly upon the bed and drifted off. She fantasizes about the ways she could kill Voldemort, and by the time she sets a dragon upon him that looks a little like Norberta, she can finally give in to rest.


	4. A Future For A Future

Hermione went to sleep at lunch, and awakes in time for breakfast. She's surprised she was so tired. So time does pass in the land of the dead, at least for those who are merely guests.

She can have breakfast at the hotel, she learns, and though she's no longer starving, Hermione finds herself picturing the food in her mind. She's been on the run so long, to her the thought of a real breakfast only brings back memories from before the war, Mrs Weasley's kitchen, and all the plates and all the sausages and all the people, Fred was telling jokes, at the time Hermione had disapproved because he was laughing at Ron, but then there had been a Fred to laugh and a Ron to be laughed at then, and it makes it retroactively a much happier moment. The Weasleys were quite poor, much poorer than Hermione's own parents, and yet there had always been food.

At Hermione's house, nobody could eat breakfast until everyone was seated, and all ate alone except on Sundays, where they had large plates with eggs and hash browns and fresh bread and five varieties of jam, and only one person could talk at a time, even on Sundays.

Though the ingredients were perhaps not as healthy, Hermione's favourite breakfasts had been at Mrs Weasley's, and she shared with Harry a secret smile whenever they would sit at the table, a kind of unspoken gratitude. _Look how lucky we are,_ she would think, and he agreed.

All that good thought and memory is quite wasted, however, because Harry's smile never comes and the hotel's breakfast does, with only one egg, but, thankfully, a decent amount of good bread.

The other hotel guests start to trickle in, and Hermione realizes they're all in fairly expensive clothing compared to the Muggles she passed in her Apparition stops. Her meager gold from fifty-five years in the future makes her one of the elite here. It must be inflation. Hermione's father is very knowledgeable about inflation, but because it doesn't happen in the wizarding world, Hermione never quite got around to reading about how it worked.

There's a book on Hermione's knees. It's a new book, or an old book, depending on whether time's ever stopped, and then started again, for the observer. It's a first edition, not that there are any other editions, yet. Hermione seldom reads novels, let alone Muggle novels, but she can't imagine 40s non-fiction would have any useful information for her, and she'd rather remain discreet.

She hasn't read two pages when a smiling man with short blond hair and a peculiarly long face sits besides her.

* * *

Philip is a writer. He's not any writer, he tells Hermione, he's a published writer, and as a lover of the arts, perhaps she's read his debut, _The Boys Who Always Die_. Hermione hopes she never hears anything about this book again.

He doesn't seem eager to leave, and so Hermione lets herself be distracted by his company. The hotel, the single egg, the long-faced Philip, the streets of London, the people with resigned faces, all of it is an invisibility cloak draping itself around the dead and the murder and the obscure schoolteacher without a case. Hermione, of course, can still feel the shape of those memories when she reaches for them, but here, in the Muggle world living in fear of a Muggle war, everything is refreshingly mundane. Like it was before she left home – though her home now has never seemed so far away.

"And then," says Philip, "there's the war. It is a major source of inspiration, do you know? There is something about this hardship, a hardship that threatens all of us-" he makes a gesture with his arms as though encompassing the room in a giant embrance "-that quiets the spirit and brings the words out of the soul. Do you not think so?"

Hermione feels singularly unthreatened by their hardship, and if her soul has ever talked, she believes she might never wish to listen to it again. But she remembers their present circumstances had made history in the Muggle world, and to them, in the instant, everything must be as uncertain as Hermione's last year. Then she realizes what has seemed so odd, caused her a slight detachment, since the beginning of their conversation.

"You aren't going to war yourself?" asks Hermione. She says it so casually, she knows he must have detected something. Accents have changed in the past fifty years; perhaps he'll think she's not from here. Perhaps this will stop him from even going down the path of thinking she's not from then.

"Oh! No," he says. "No, I do not believe in murder. I have the utmost appreciation for the brave who defend us – but myself, I could never feel my soul again. I used to write about that, but the public wasn't very interested. Very sad. I keep telling myself, if it wasn't for my father, I would have been most at peace in the church. Yes indeed. I believe the Christ showed us the way, by refusing to let the barbarism of his enemies corrupt him, and teaching his disciples about faith, and hope, and -"

Hermione can't believe she didn't see that one coming. After a few more minutes, she learns that Philip's father is some lord from Someplace-in-the-moor, ill and old. But all men of suitable age and constitution have been called upon. _Such a pity for Voldemort's father,_ thinks Hermione. If he hadn't gone out of his way to not be serving his country, he may have saved his own life.

* * *

Hermione stands near the fallen body of some government official, whose detour to the archives will take rather longer than expected. It's not so bad. She's used the Imperius before, on wizard civil servants, but he's only stunned. Third time's the charm, she thinks. The memory alteration might just take.

At first, she thinks she can't do it again, not without her own memories affecting the process. But she has to – it's how she brings Harry back, it's how she gets rid of Voldemort, it's how she ends the war that won't happen. It grows easier. When the subject isn't someone she knows, Hermione finds concentrating on the details and the process of memory alteration much more comfortable. She hasn't had to hurry like that before, though. She's efficient, but not sloppy. She surprises herself, wishing Flitwick could see her. To think she technically never sat her N.E.W.T.s!

* * *

When Voldemort gets the letter he laughs.

It makes sense he thinks it's a joke, because it's not his war. Even Hermione's war isn't his war, not really, not so much as it's his game.

But when the reminder comes, and then the Muggles come, Hermione's people, she reminds herself, that Voldemort hates so much, and she sees him argue, talk to the orphanage matron, demand they talk to the other kids, she grasps how brilliant her new plan is.

In and of itself, the idea of tricking the Muggles into thinking Voldemort's avoiding his part in their war, rather than merely too young to fight, seems a step toward Voldemort's own path. Isn't dragging children into battles they aren't prepared for and never fathomed his thing? Hermione still remembers a pale, shaken Draco Malfoy in his parents' dungeon, looking almost a prisoner in his own childhood home.

But Voldemort, Hermione thinks, is unlikely to die in any Muggle war. Besides, while her knowledge of the future isn't the best, she's fairly sure the worst is over. The point isn't to kill Voldemort, merely to trap him. Hermione knows, Hermione remembers every single time she thinks, that all wars you take part of you cannot entirely escape, and Hermione hopes his makes Voldemort quite unlikely to return to Wizarding life.

Besides, just like her, he'd have no N.E.W.T.s. That shady shop in Knockturn is unlikely to hire some Muggle-raised no-name who left school early, no matter what his teachers used to say about his potential, and by the time he returns, his charming little club of school chums will belong to the past, with their future lying with new wives or new careers – and a Voldemort without his influence should be about as powerful as a Dumbledore without his.


	5. The Boy Who Shall Not Have Lived

Hermione can't say she's missed sleeping outside, always watchful, but she has to admit that being the one who watches Voldemort the boy, betrayed by his government, with no home to shield him, slowly await the end of his childhood is deliciously appropriate. She feels a bit guilty, at first, but then she remembers this boy killed people, whereas Harry's only crime had been to be born.

Voldemort, in his room, moves very little. He looks through a pile of books, occasionally takes his wand in his fingers, and he probably feels even more irate and powerless at the thought it still has the Trace on it.

Hermione plays with her mind at pretending she's in his place. It's not hard to conjure the first feelings of anger, of helplessness, because they have become so familiar. She'd look for the rules first, with much the same inclination that led her to the Ministry at first; and, opposed by much the same unfair advantage of the status quo, she'd fail.

She'd read. She'd desperately look for a solution, any solution, at any cost, and then she would retain the most acceptable.

She'd use magic. Of course, Voldemort cannot – not the kind of magic they were taught at school, anyway, and though Voldemort is –was- the most skilled Legilimens alive it's not going to help him much. As far as Hermione knows, Legilimency doesn't come with supernatural powers of suggestion.

She'd cry, too, but that she's sure Voldemort won't allow himself to do, not even when reduced to the most ineffective rage.

She shifts in her hiding, right next to the window. Voldemort has stopped reading, and is now looking straight ahead of him, possibly in despair. Wanting to see his features better – to look at his expression – to see how much resemblance it bears to that of his father, not long ago, at Death's own door – she rises and looks to him, making sure to keep all of her under Peverell's cloak.

Voldemort is still looking outside, towards her. Through her, Hermione thinks, not without pride. No, near her. Towards her? At her!

Hermione scrambles to the ground, too low to be seen, and looks around. What did he see? How did he see? Could Voldemort, sixteen-year-old murderer and once future dark lord of wizardkind, see through the cloak that fooled death itself?

She tries to hear if someone's coming, and though it's hard to make out anything above the sounds of her own rushing thoughts, all feels silent. All is as it had been the last few days. As everything calms down, Hermione can feel the wind on her face, blowing her frizzy hair in front of her eyes; she holds it back, and there's still nothing.

There Hermione realizes how wrong she has been. She thought, standing in front of the window shielded by the cloak, almost gloating, that she was free from Voldemort; rather even that _he_ was bound and restrained by chains of her design: in sum, that she has won.

But it is untrue, she knows from the coming back of her senses and the settling of her wild thoughts. This Voldemort she might have overpowered, but that Voldemort, the one who stole her friend and her love and her world, that Voldemort owns her still. The way she ran, and feared, and hid, as if he ruled the world again!

And this is how Hermione finally learns on her own what she suspects Harry knew from the first – that she is not, though she has Cloak and plans and magic of her own, anymore the master of death than Voldemort has ever been. And for the first time Hermione thinks she might fail, that in the end, it might not matter that she's smarter or older or wiser or stronger than Voldemort is now. And more frighteningly Hermione thinks she might succeed, and that she might have to go home with her deeds and her memories and her fears, and that she'll have to live, and that it might be harder than not dying. She thinks of Neville, who could have been the Boy-Who-Lived, and now, in the other world, has to live indeed, as one of few remaining traces of the war, again. She has the feeling Neville would not have grabbed the Cloak and left. Neville probably stayed and endured and waited, for a time when Voldemort, weakened by his arrogance and the loss of most of his soul, made a big enough mistake.

* * *

It is September first, and it's the second September Hermione doesn't go to school. The first time, it was so that Voldemort would not find her; this time, it's so that she will not lose him.

In about a week, Voldemort has tried to escape twice. The first time, he went to Little Hangleton again, but was scared off when Hermione, donning a conjured cloak and Auror hat, pretended to interrogate his father's gardener. The second time he took off to Diagon, to steal an owl and try to contact one of his cronies; Hermione was very sorry about what had happened to the owl, but suffices to say young Lestrange's holiday will continue uneventfully.

Voldemort is up early, and by 7, he is already dressed, with his books, previously hidden under his mattress, now put away within his school trunk. He is reading a roll of parchment that Hermione has no trouble recognizing: the results of his O.W.L.s. Hermione finds herself fidgeting with her wand, wishing she could cast just one, innocent spell and see whether he got more O's than she had, but the weight of her mission soon silences the cry of her vanity.

She, instead, follows as Voldemort leaves the orphanage, and starts walking along narrow and almost empty streets. Progressively, they move into denser areas, and, in the end, they arrive at a place Hermione really should have expected: King's Cross, where the train is due to leave for Hogwarts in almost two hours. Apparently undaunted at the prospect of waiting, Voldemort proceeds to sit down and take from his trunk a notebook. _Is that that diary?_ wonders Hermione. It was years ago and she'd never seen it all that closely, but it would fit. She finds the idea surprising. She's never thought Voldemort had truly confided in a diary; at most she thought he might have written a few entries here and there, to try, but she thought him too secretive and too focused on his plans to spend any great amount of time journaling. Rather she imagined he had devised it as a weapon from the start, or perhaps that he had seen in a blank notebook the most symbolic hiding place for a piece of soul – Voldemort, like Hermione, seemed to have enjoyed reading beyond what was required for classwork.

Yet, Hermione's wrong, here again. She sits not far from Voldemort, and waits.

When wizards begin arriving at King's Cross Hermione has to stifle a smile, perhaps even the first she's had in this time that isn't caused by triumph. The parents, by and large even more ignorant of Muggles than in her time, mostly wear robes or strange fashions, such as this father of a chubby blond, proudly presenting his white tights and low heels. (Hermione rather suspects a pureblood family; most wizards of even remote Muggle ancestry have at least seen Muggle clothing that doesn't date from the 1800s).

She chases the familiar faces as she sees them reach for the threshold to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. There's one family who are most definitely related to the Weasleys, two parents and a few boys with bright red hair; the eldest boy, tall and lean, even looks like Ron. Another girl, in the middle of a pack of black-haired children who all look alike, is copiously insulting what must be either her sister or her cousin: most likely a much younger Mrs Black.

Suddenly hit with a thought, Hermione turns towards Voldemort. He's put away his diary, and he too is watching the wizarding students, and Hermione understands his plan. This is where Voldemort finds his cronies, takes his place among them, and boards the train as in any other year; in Hogwarts, no Muggle, military or not, is really going to reach him. Neither will Hermione, for that matter, and that's why she can't let this happen.

As Voldemort stands up, Hermione, disguising her wand as best she can, makes a slight tear in his trunk. He walks a bit, and eventually his schoolbooks widen the tear enough to fall to the ground. Amidst the crowd at the station, he struggles to get them back, and falls to his knees to gather them around him.

Hermione looks up to the station's clock. Fifteen minutes, and the delay will be enough, and the Hogwarts Express will have left on its last voyage of the year, leaving exactly one student behind.

People might talk, wonder why someone with Voldemort's potential would leave school early, but then he is poor and orphaned. Such a waste, they might think, just as they did when Harry died, but in time, as their lives move on and he doesn't come back, they'll forget him, just as Voldemort himself was confident they'd forget the Boy-Who-Lived.

That's what bothers Hermione the most about society and the state of the world: that even faced with clear injustice, there are so many people who find reasons to forget and do nothing. Only Hermione and Ron have tried to reverse Harry's fate, and, in a way, Tom Riddle's is inevitable precisely because he has nobody like them. She pities him a little, but then, if she didn't, she'd be exactly like him.

She turns to the boy again, now almost running towards the wall to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, and in another flick of her wand, the ring with the fat gemstone he's been wearing on his right hand suddenly slides off, and, as if on its own, rolls its way, clunking, towards her.

While Voldemort looks around she pockets it, and waits, as the clock's hands move to restore the time that should have been. Two minutes. He becomes more and more frantic, running around the Muggles, eyes on the ground, looking underneath every step someone takes, until he comes right near her, and lifts his face towards hers; at first she thinks she will be afraid and ruin it all, like through the window before, but as she examines him more closely with his features distorted, his skin white, his hands trembling, she's reminded of Gollum, a character from the last Muggle book she's re-read at her parents' home, who acquires a ring through murder and then goes mad at losing it, and the fear goes away, she feels like laughing.

Finally he glances quickly at the clock. Hermione follows him, and as they both look on, one in horror and the other in glee, the clock strikes twelve. A few feet away, and yet in some ways in another world, a steam locomotive roars and ordinary extraordinary folks wave goodbye.

Hermione takes in her surroundings. This is where it all began. This is where she first thought she could grow up and do great things, and change the world.

She fingers the heirloom ring.

This is where she finally does.


End file.
